Golf Rarely Goes as Planned

Golf, like life, seldom goes as planned. All you can really do, in golf as in life, is refuse to give up no matter how miserable it is.

I played in the qualifier for our club team yesterday. I didn't have particularly high expectations, since I've struggled mightily with my game this year. But I never expected to putt as abysmally as I did. I hit the ball as well as I've hit it for years, but couldn't buy a putt. I missed at least six putts inside five feet, including a couple of two footers.

In the end I was tied with Randy for the last spot on the team and we had to play off. Randy had become angry on the fifteenth hole when, after searching in vain for his ball for at least ten minutes, I said we had to move on. I advised him that five minutes was the time allotted by the rules to look for a lost ball and we had well exceeded that. He was furious. But that's the rule.

As we were about to tee off for the playoff Randy angrily stated that there wouldn't have had to be a playoff if he had found his lost ball. I replied: "Yep. And if your aunt had had nuts she'd have been your uncle." I didn't bother mentioning all the short putts I had missed.

The first hole is a short dogleg par four. I hit a perfect three wood, leaving myself sixty yards to a front pin. Randy tried to take the Tiger line over the trees to the front edge of the green, managed to clatter through the trees, and had about a forty yard pitch over the pond.

I hit it to about five feet. Randy hit a pitch just over the pond into the thick grass and his ball somehow bounced through the rough, onto the green to about two feet from the pin. Levi had driven out to watch the playoff, and I had told him I was going to look at the playiff like a new round, forgetting all the lousy putts I'd hit. I assured him I was going to just stand up and knock that putt in, with the expectation that we'd be going to a second playoff hole.

Sure enough, I stood up and knocked it in the hole. Randy was probably vexed that I was making him putt his two footer, but I'd missed a couple, and he was being a prick, so I made him putt it. Sure enough, Randy lipped it out, banged his ball off the green in disgust, and actually threw his putter at his cart. He drove away without shaking my hand.

So, the moral of my story is: don't give up, Randy is a dickhead, and, if your aunt had had nuts, she'd have been your uncle. Golf rarely goes as planned. But, if you keep trying, things sometimes work out. And sometimes they won't, but at least you'll have the consolation of knowing you tried your hardest.